"When we're five bottles deep, we've been drinking. When we're Five Pedals Deep, we're drunk on music. [It’s a very real feeling: with enough vulnerability, and with the right band mates, the making of music is an overwhelming sensory experience.] There are five pedals in a piano trio, between the piano, bass and drums; there are also nested layers of musical “pedals”, long bass notes that tie different harmonies together, throughout this record. In 2010, after an acclaimed six-year run with his previous trio, Dan Tepfer felt the urge to try something new; the general feeling was that the trio had become too tight, too self-knowing, and that a situation with more unknowns was needed. This record, with bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Ted Poor, is the result: a meeting, in the studio, of a new band, over a repertoire of new original music.
The originals on the record document Tepfer’s search for a musical language that is uncompromisingly intricate,
yet speaks directly to the listener at an intuitive level. The band uses textures (on All I Heard Was Nothing, Peal Repeal, and Nines in particular) that are truly groundbreaking in jazz, but it is the integrity of the melodies, their singable quality, that guides the ear. Framing the record are the haunting Jacques Brel song Le Plat Pays and the standard Body and Soul, which Tepfer plays solo, with a dose of irreverence that he may have inherited from his mentor and collaborator, Lee Konitz."